Truly, truly awful

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:42 AM -0500 1/26/05, Orion Montoya wrote:
>I heard your wife's pronunciation once, in the mid-late nineties, on a
>high-school girl from Phoenix.  I assumed it was a mis-parsing of the
>words in the compound, like the couple people I've met who pronounce
>"albeit" with two syllables to rhyme with German "arbeit" (i.e.
>/Al'baIt/).
>
On that last one, a compromise that I often hear is a nod to the
well-known concessionaire "Al B. It", with focus on his middle
initial-- /ael'biyIt/.  Still trisyllabic, no German diphthong, but
first syllable definitely "al", with no connection to "all".  I
haven't heard this spelling pronunciation with "altogether" or
"already", so I assume it's partly a widespread loss of transparency
in the case of "albeit".

Larry